Heins: “Best Day Ever for Launch of a New BlackBerry Smartphone”

I’m sure there are quite a few analysts out there right now, regretting some of the negative comments they made about the future of Blackberry. It’s going to take some time before the company and brand starts to gain back the market share that it lost over the past couple of years. After all, success isn’t something that just happens overnight.

Or is it?

Yesterday was the very first time that the Blackberry Z10 was available to consumers in Canada. Rogers, Bell and Telus all met with quite a bit of excitement in their retail stores thanks to the launch. In addition, according the Blackberry CEO, Thorsten Heins, the launch of the Z10 in Canada was one of the best ever in the history of the company.

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada. In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

Then again, if you consider the fact that this is the first true mobile release from Blackberry in over a year it’s no surprise that loyal fans are dying to get a hold of the Z10. The real test for Blackberry will occur over the next year.

The Blackberry 10 platform certainly has enough charm to bring consumers back on board, but does it provide enough to rend folks away from an ecosystem they’re already invested in. By now, many consumers that dropped their Blackberry for an iPhone or Android handset, have had their new devices for some time. That means, while Blackberry 10 has been in development, they’ve invested time and resources into the new platform.

Strictly speaking, if I have all of my music stored in the cloud through Google Play and have already purchased a boatload of apps in the Google Play store, it’s going to take a lot to make me walk away from it and start all over. All of those apps will need to be repurchased through Blackberry World, and all of those resources will have to be reallocated. The same thing holds true for anyone that’s invested lots of time into iOS with an iPhone.

Personally, I’m not too fond of losing everything after switching back to a Blackberry 10 device. Not everyone will share my opinion but still, the point is that there are folks out there who are going to need some convincing. If Blackberry can prove to everyone that the platform is worth switching to, then success will be inevitable.

Still, this is certainly a step in the right direction. Yesterday happened to be the best [Canadian] launch ever in Blackberry history? That’s fantastic news!